So Bootcamp grew out of my own attempt to ground myself in the basics, since I'm self taught.

So anyway I've done a few of the levels, thought I'd throw them up and get some feedback on them. Now's your chance to beat me down in payback for all the harsh critiques I've handed out.

Bring it on, the more things wrong the more I'll improve. If you've got eyes you're qualified to critique and let me know what's not working..

-Alonso

they're all MPG's so they'll open in your default player, or if you download them you can rightclick and choose a different player.

so Level 1: Basic Movement
Final Project: 2 balls of different materials interacting, one of the balls should have a tail.

Level 2: Basic Biped Movement
FINAL PROJECT: Mr. Ball through an obstacle course (just throw some primitives onto a scene and have Mr. Ball work with them.)

Skipping around

Level VII ACTING
Goals: Make it feel like there's a thinking entity on screen. Bonus for managing to act instead of vaudivilleing it.
This wasn't the official Final Project, but it accomplishes the point (or tries to at least) of displaying some acting, with bonus of lipsynch

Okay, I am going to give this a try

The Cat balls, as my son calls them:
Well, first I have to say that it looked really good. I thought that the yellow cat did a double jump on the roof. He squashed and scooted back like he was ready to pounce, but I thought that he lost all his momentum when after he jumped the first time, then squashed again. May have been a double jump. When the yellow cat jumped, his momentum wasn't carried throughout the fall. He started going forward, but then stopped and fell straight down like he hit an invisible wall.

The Eye Ball:
I thought this one was funny but was unsure if you character slipped after he turned the corner, or if he was trying to make a bigger step. I also thought the weight of your character wasn't carry from side to side as much as it should have been during the jumps. His right leg also gets obsorbed into the wall he his jumping off of.

Couple:
I feel bad for the guy for getting shot down in a park bench. If I read the lips right, he said "Will you marry me?"

Well, there was my attemp at the being the instructor, Well, I have alot to clean up so,

.........and then.

Thanks a lot Odog, I'll look into all those things.

I tried to make the floor shiny for the eyball but couldn't get it to render smoothly (anyone have any tips, for getting reflections to render well?)

I didn't realize the lipsynch one didn't come out with sound, I'll slap it up again with the voices. (grrr this piece keeps fighting me with rendering)

-Alonso

Allright here's the version with sound (I hope)

Hi Alonso.

Very nice clips. Good storytelling, and interesting characters.

A couple crits on the animation. In the first one, the blue cat is a little floaty at the beginning, the tail should move more quickly and have some clear holds even if it is heavy. You get the feeling in the respiration, but i think the squash and stretch is too uniform. Maybe it would sell better if the upper half would inflate while the body is stretching. I like the first quick look of the yellow ball, but he comes out too slowly the second time. Maybe you could wait a couple frames for the blue cat to react after the impact on the tail. The moment where they see each other works perfectly, and the run away too. Your second clip,
i love it, the only thing i see would be more movement with the guy's left leg to show some nervousness.
My 2cents, hope it is of some help.

Michel

I don't know if it is a good tip, but what I do for mine, because I am so fascinated with the reflect is:

-either a white or black surface color for the ground
-the only other thing I mess with is reflectivity, I put mine at 25%, which is a lot, but if you use it with a black surface color it kind of dulls it out.

That is what is on pretty much all my exercises and the ABC's that I have done. Hope that helps

James

Thanks Odog,

You were right about that yellow catball, the hop down the arc is totally botched. I need to carefully watch yellow's double bounce to see if I agree.

The eyehop, again you're right, I'm going in to fix the getting absorbed by the wall. It was a tricky assignment I'd given myself trying to make the floor looks slippery, the more I look at it the more I think I need to change the timing on the slip. I'll take another look at the weight rocking back and forth. I haven't tried messing with color on the reflectivity, maybe that'll work. What keeps happening with mine is part of the ground will render with reflection, part will render transparent, and part will render flat. ? Are you multipassing, or using soft reflections?

Animus,
Your right, I think I didn't pay close enough attention to the tail in the beginning, and the breathing felt a little to easy. I'll take a look at yellow stalking onto the roof, see if I feel it's to slow.
With the eyeball, I had a really hard time getting the timing on that fall to feel right, like he had just over estimated and went over. You're right, I need to make the feet more frantic once the fall starts.

Thanks guys.

-Alonso

Well, to be honest, I am not to sure on most of the terms that pop up in the threads. Before I bought the A:M program I wasn't really interested in any kind of art work. But in an attempt to answer you question, I can tell you what I do, and what I think about the color of the ground when using reflections.

Of course, I start at frame 00:00:00, I don't think it really matters for the ground, but to be safe I start there. The first thing I do is change the color of the ground. I do this because one time I was working on a simple 'Name Tag' project, and I forgot to change the color of the ground. I couldn't figure out why it kept rendering really flat and not reflective even at 100%. For some reason, I think if you don't change the ground color, it will do what you are having problems with, I seem to remember that happening to me a few time. Anyways, so I chang the color, then the only other thing I do is change the percentage of reflectivness. I don't ever mess with anything else in the properties window. I like to use the color black when using reflect, because at a low percentage, it lightens up the color, and it does give it a 'slick' look. I think that if you want the ground to stay the color you have it, you should just open up the property menu for the ground, change the color to gray and put a low percentage lie 5%-15%, 15% is kind of high the way it renders I think. That should keep the color between white and gray and give it kind of an 'icy' look.

I hope I explained this right. Most of the time I have my notebook with me at work, so I can test things before I post in the forum. But today I didn't bring it, so I will see if I explained it right when I get home today, and edit if I need to.

James

Hey Alonso!
I'll just say a couple things that I noticed about your stuff. I really like them all.
On the first one you really did a great job on the tails. I can definitely see that you understand this concept thoroughly. I really love the movement on the tail when he jumps up in shock. The only thing that I would improve is that maybe you should be more clear about what the big ball is doing. Is he resting? Awesome work on the slide with the eyeball piece. I'm just not too wild about how his right foot "slips" when he's running, it sort of counter-acts the movement forward. Just my take. I really enjoyed the timing on the last one. Very nice job on the lip sync. Work on the final head movement when he says "please", it gets a little choppy. Keep up the great work!

Hi Alonso.

I missed your question on the shiny floor. I post the surface settings for the the ground i used in my Mr Ball exercise clip, in case it is something like that you want.

Also when i talked of your second clip, i meant the couple clip(wich is great), i missed the eyeball clip at that time.

Michel

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Thanks for the comments, they helped.

I'm still fighting the reflection. I've tried adjusting the number of multipasses, the level of reflection, and all the surface properties. But I'm consistently getting these flaws.

Here's a poorly compressed clip (250k MPG) but you can still see the flaws I'm trying to overcome. The floor flickers and changes reflectivity. I don't even know where it's getting those lines, the geometry doesn't go underneath the ground like that. It seems to be somewhat related to the animation because I rerendered the problem frames and got similar results.

Any tips?

-Alonso

Have you tried rendering it as a .mov format ?